BitTorrent throttling report reveals Comcast is keeping its word

There is no greater bane to a BitTorrent users than an ISP that throttles their speed down to 56k modem speeds from the ’80s. It is a topic that is hotly debated across the internet about which ISP throttles and those that don’t, or which ones will report a user for piracy or not.

The biggest villain in the whole BitTorrent debate in recent history has been made out to be Comcast. They were caught throttling 49% of their customers who were using bandwidth for P2P file sharing. After being exposed for their actions, the FCC ordered Comcast to stop throttling on a large scale. A report has appeared this week that indicates the communications company has kept its word and ceased such practices.

A two year study was conducted by Measurement Lab (M-Lab), monitoring various broadband providers using an application called “Glasnost” (which means openness in Russian). The results were published recently showing some interesting figures across the world about the best and worst companies out there in terms of levels of throttling.

In the US, the worst offender has been found to be ClearWire, a company that slows down 17% of their customer base when using BitTorrent. The best? It’s quite refreshing to hear it is Comcast, at only 3%. Comcast deserves to be applauded for its compliance with the order from the FCC.

The worst offender in the report was Rogers from Canada, with a whopping 78% of their users being throttled. Hopefully, just like Comcast, action will be taken and Rogers will be told to stop such practices.